Norman Jewison to shoot

Painted Word segment in T.O.

Norman Jewison will be in town at the end of the month to direct one of six 30-minute tv movies for the series, The Painted Word. Coproduced by Jewison's company, Yorktown Productions, and Skyvision Entertainment, each segment revolves around a feature film director's take on a painting and/or short story. Jewison's piece, written by Seth Flicker and inspired by Edward Hopper's Soir Bleu and the opera Il Paliacci, is expected to shoot Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 in Toronto.

Joe Dante shot segment number one, Lightning, in the u.s. this fall with Brian Keith, Kathleen Quinlan and Ron Perlman starring. Other directors signed are John Schlesinger and Jonathan Kaplan.

More production of The Painted Word is expected to come Toronto's way this winter. Casting is underway north and south of the border.

Howard Rosen is co-executive producer with Jewison, Jeff Freilich is supervising producer, Scott Frank of Los Angeles is producer, and Albert Botha is production manager. Showtime Networks is broadcasting in the States, likely in fall of 1995.

Remains of the day

Independent documentary filmmaker Jacques Holender (Musicians in Exile, Voodoo) has started production in Toronto on Time is on My Side, a stylish feature documentary about the death industries.

The Nemesis Productions film tracks the experiences of a dead man as he looks back on his post-mortem time on earth. Our hero's death is a suspicious (and fictionalized) one, so first stop is the coroner's office for an autopsy. You can imagine the rest - from a visit to the hairdresser to final landing at the crematorium.

For the grisly shoot (Holender admits he's "a bit squeamish"), a cam-remote was commissioned from Level 7 Systems (a Toronto-based motion-control technology and robotics specialist) in collaboration with Glen Orr.

The camera contraption will be used by dop Robert Fresco for two tricky feats: to suspend our late guide's pov about 30 feet above ground, and since real, dead bodies will be present when shooting the autopsy, cremation, etc., (this is a documentary, after all) the cam-remote will help to gingerly shoot around the real stuff.

It wasn't difficult to get the death industry professionals onside, says Holender. "They are actually very charming people," he says, "and I would say (they) have a very healthy attitude toward death. We don't know very much about these people because we don't want to know."

Time is on My Side is not a gruesome, ghoulish trip but one that focuses on what Holender calls "the Western denial of death."

Holender is producing and directing, John Martin is handling sound, Suzanne Allan is production manager and Barri Cohen is ad.

The $330,000 project for tvontario, supported by Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Film Development Corporation, will likely kick off the 1995 fall season of tvo's The View From Here. The 16mm shoot continues through Dec. 4.